


and then some

by wekeepeachotherhuman



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 3x05 A Life in the Day, Fillory, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 11:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16474931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wekeepeachotherhuman/pseuds/wekeepeachotherhuman
Summary: On a quiet day at the castle, Eliot and Margo go back to the mosaic.—Margo rolls her eyes and then looks around the room dramatically. “You know, if all the inanimate objects in the room came alive Beauty and the Beast-style, you know what they would say to you?”“That’s a haunting image,” Eliot says, definitively trying to steer this conversation out of vulnerable territory.“They’d call you a fucking liar,” Margo says, ignoring him. “This room has the best vibes I’ve ever felt in my life. You know why?”“Why?”“Because you talked about your feelings.”





	and then some

The rooms at Whitespire seem to close in on themselves now. Eliot thinks everything seems so small and suffocating. A long and full life. That’s what he’d shared with Quentin at the mosaic. His hands itch for it again. Well, something like it. Something  _ exactly _ like it, but maybe this time, Margo could be there too. 

A long and full life within a tiny existence. It seemed so simple. With Quentin, he hadn’t been a King. He hadn’t lived in a world where every word he spoke, every action he took,  _ meant something _ . He, and Quentin too, had just been allowed to exist. When was the last time either of them had been afforded that luxury? Before Brakebills. Before  _ magic _ altogether. Maybe not even then. 

Eliot had been happy in a way he had never been before. He’d been happy in all the small ways. He’d been happy in all the places he’d previously taught himself to ignore. In small moments, alone and quiet, he was  _ happy _ . And sometimes he’d catch Quentin in those small moments too. Alone and quiet, forgetting there could be another set of eyes on him. And Quentin had looked happy in those moments too. Like he’d forgotten that he lived in the same skin with his worst enemy. 

And maybe what made Eliot the most happy was that he was a part of what made Quentin feel that way. 

“You wanna take the Margolem for a ride?” That’s Margo. Eliot hadn’t even heard her heels clipping against the stone floor as she’d approached his quarters. 

“Hmm?” He hums back, without taking his eyes away from the opened window in front of him. He’d been looking out across the rolling Fillorian fields. Trying to pinpoint exactly where the mosaic was, looking for any thin lines of smoke from a chimney in the cottages around it. Looking for anyone else, living that wonderfully content life that he and Quentin had been granted. 

Margo comes closer. She sits on the edge of the settee beneath the window. She looks out the window too, trying to capture whatever it is that Eliot’s got in his head. She shuffles closer to him. She lays her cheek on his shoulder and Eliot thinks:  _ this is it _ . This is the only thing my life had been missing. He hitches his hand around her waist. 

“You look like you want to go somewhere,” she says.

“Anywhere but here,” Eliot says. Eliot sees Margo roll her eyes. “No offence,” he adds. 

“Oh, no. None taken,” she says. “Spending time with you when you’re being Romeo-level dramatic makes me want to say the same thing about you.”

Eliot laughs, then finally turns away from the window and looks down at Margo. She’s still smiling too. Before he can say anything, she pushes herself forward and presses a kiss on the corner of his mouth. She’s trying to ground him. Bring him back to this moment. Like she always has. And Eliot feels his heart swell with a thought he’d rarely allowed himself before he grew older and frankly, wiser.  _ He’s loved _ . In this moment. In the moment Quentin had first kissed him. In  _ every _ moment. 

His heart swells until he can’t take the vulnerability anymore. His cheeks going red, he looks away from Margo and decides that humour has always been his strongest armour. 

“I resent being called Romeo. I’m clearly a Mercutio,” he says. 

He feels Margo put her hand on his chest. “You wish,” she replies. 

She laughs when Eliot laughs and then lays her head on his chest. She takes a deep breath. 

“It’s quiet,” she says against his skin. Eliot hums in agreement. “So. If you wanted to go somewhere.” She looks up at Eliot, who looks down to meet her eyes. She smiles sincerely before she sits up. She keeps her hand on Eliot’s chest, keeping the contact between them clear and constant. “I think we could get away with it.”

“You wanna cut class?” Eliot asks. 

“We were always so good at it.”

 

—

 

They go to the mosaic. Eliot had never answered Margo’s question:  _ you want to go somewhere, where do you want to go? _ But he’d led them here anyway. 

From the edge of the forest, it looks exactly how Eliot remembers it. It’s rundown. Untouched, probably since him and Quentin. Eliot doesn’t know why, but that thought makes something in his chest crack. Every thing he looks at is dusted with history he knows deep in his bones. He wonders if he touches something, if he’ll still be able to feel Quentin there. 

And Quentin isn’t dead. But something makes it feel like he is. This Quentin is. This Eliot is too. And that’s suddenly unsettling. He looks out across the mosaic, out across the small clearing that had been their home. As loved and cared for as one another. 

There’s a small wooden cross, rotting with time, thrust into the earth. Eliot goes to it. Margo follows him. He stands a few feet away from the marker. Catholic, even though neither him or Quentin had ever been religious. Habit, Eliot thinks. Though he wishes Quentin had done something a little more  _ Fillorian _ . 

Beside him, Eliot feels Margo tense. Chilled by something. 

“Is that…  _ You _ ?” She finally says. 

Eliot swallows hard. “I think so,” he says. Her eyes wide, mouth hanging slightly open, Margo looks up at him. “That’s…” Eliot starts, but he doesn’t know what staring down at his own grave  _ actually is _ . 

“So goth,” Margo finishes for him. 

Eliot turns to her. That wasn’t exactly the answer he’d been looking for, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like it. “It is, isn’t it?”

Eliot turns on his heel and heads towards the cottage he and Quentin had spent most of their time. Margo stays where she is. Eliot doesn’t watch her, but she crouches down, reaches out and touches the grass and dirt covering her best friend. She feels inexplicably sad, choked down by something she can’t quite explain. 

This is the Eliot her Eliot has always wanted to be. And here he is, buried and forgotten in some fucking Fillorian forest. Nameless in every way. Except for the mosaic. Which was, what… Supposed to help you find the beauty of all life? What good was that when you had to go back to a world built before you’d found it?

She looks over her shoulder. Eliot’s gone. The door to one of the cottages still hangs open. She goes towards it. 

Everything inside is either cracked or covered in dust. 

The cottage is small. Big enough to house only the necessities. And even though it’s sat empty for years now, it still feels comfortable. The utter opposite of a haunted house. Filled with memories that only paint the walls in good feelings and warm candle light. 

There’s a bed towards the back of the cottage. Made a private room only by a ratty curtain hanging in the doorway. The curtain’s half-open and moth-eaten, so Margo can see Eliot sitting down on the bed. He’s on the edge and one of his hands is extended out towards the pillows. 

Margo sits down next to him. Takes in the room. 

“Not exactly the Ritz,” she says. 

“No,” Eliot says through a laugh. 

“But homey as fuck,” she continues. Eliot smiles wider. He hangs his chin down towards his chest. “I can see why you liked it.”

“Really?” Eliot asks. He turns towards her, his brows furrowed together. “This isn’t really my M.O.”

Margo shrugs. Her eyes catch a thin sweater hanging on a chair across the room. It doesn’t look like something of Eliot’s. Too small to fit him. Means it could only belong to one person. “Quentin was here,” she says. 

She turns back to Eliot, just in time to catch his eye, before he drops his gaze down to the dusty quilt they’re sitting on. She reaches out and holds his hand with both of hers. He doesn’t look up at her, but Margo feels Eliot squeeze her hands back. A subtle thank you in a way that only Eliot Waugh is capable of. 

“It’s not like he’s dead,” Eliot suddenly says. His tone chiding and self-deprecating. “This is,” he vaguely gestures at himself and then shakes his head. “I don’t know why…” 

“I’ve had a dream where you died,” Margo says, cutting him off. “Not just you. My Mom. My friends from before Brakebills.” She shrugs. “I’d wake up and I’d know they weren’t actually gone. But it still felt like they were.”

“It’s just a shadow,” Eliot says. “A spill,” he continues, shrugging. “I loved him, that doesn’t mean, I…”

“So what if it does?” Margo asks. 

“Margo,” Eliot says, rolling his eyes. 

“So what if it does?” Margo repeats. 

“I’m married,” Eliot says. “ _ Twice _ .”

“And when you weren’t, who did you choose?”

Eliot shakes his head, pulls his hand away from Margo and clasps them together in his lap. “I wouldn’t call it a choice. We were… It was just us.”

“Jesus Christ,” Margo mutters. “I’m trying to…” She takes a deep breath, readies herself to start over. “You know, it’s okay to have feelings every now and then.”

“That never goes well for me,” Eliot says back. 

Margo rolls her eyes and then looks around the room dramatically. “You know, if all the inanimate objects in the room came alive  _ Beauty and the Beast _ -style, you know what they would say to you?”

“That’s a haunting image,” Eliot says, definitively trying to steer this conversation out of vulnerable territory. 

“They’d call you a fucking liar,” Margo says, ignoring him. “This room has the best vibes I’ve ever felt in my life. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you talked about your feelings.”

Eliot rolls his eyes and takes a deep breath. 

“Eliot,” Margo starts again sternly. 

“What?”

“ _ Something _ died here,” she says. “You’re allowed to feel that.”

And it’s almost as if getting permission was all that it took. Some small, fucked-up emotional remnant from all the years spent with his father. He feels a warm sadness wash over him. It’s all he’d ever needed: permission, approval, acceptance. It’s like a god damn how-to guide for him. And here, at this mosaic, in this room, Quentin had it memorized. 

“I don’t know how to carry this,” he finally says. 

Margo takes a deep breath. But she isn’t scared or put-off by him letting his guard down. It’s a piece of honesty that she can finally work with. She nods and reaches out for his hand again. This time, Eliot can’t imagine pulling away. 

“It’s a lot,” she says. “And when there’s a lot, I break it apart. Get to know all the small pieces. Keep the good. Throw away the bad. Learn everything that you can and then hand off what’s too heavy. It’s still yours, but you don’t have to carry it alone.”

“Yeah,” Eliot mumbles back. 

“And you know what’s usually best?” Eliot looks up at her, hopeful for anything that might help him navigate everything since his life at the mosaic. “Talking to someone with similar life experiences.” She raises her eyebrows playfully and starts to smile. Eliot groans, smiling too, but knows an order from Margo when he hears one. 

“Right,” he says. “Of course.”

Margo laughs and shuffles close enough that she can lay her head on Eliot’s shoulder. She keeps her hands firmly around his and lets the moment hang. They take in the room together. Letting all those good vibes wash over them until it feels like the world starts to fall away beyond the cottage. 

It’s always seemed to have that effect. 


End file.
